Talk:Natural farming

Naming convention
The naming convention I am using here is to capitalize both words as per a proper noun for both "Natural Farming" (Fukuoka's method) and "Nature Farming" (Okada's method).

The logic behind it is to remove any confusion that such farming systems are simply "natural farming", as in using natural as a purely descriptive adjective, because ultimately no farming is "natural". Ditto "nature farming", as in 'farming natures', on its own does make sense (e.g. potato farming = farming potatoes, nature farming = farming nature).

The source use for this division was 'Sustainable Agriculture: Definition and Terms' published by the Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. --Iyo-farm (talk) 08:11, 13 May 2011 (UTC)--Iyo-farm (talk) 08:07, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

See: Nature : "This article is about the physical universe." = The Universe – The Cosmos; as interwiki–linked–to therein: : 自然 (shizen / jinen).--macropneuma 05:57, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved; "Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization." WP:MOSCAPS. As far as I can tell, Macropneuma's comment is not in opposition to this move, but rather suggests a radical refactoring of this article. This closure certainly isn't meant to prejudice against doing that. ErikHaugen (talk &#124; contribs) 19:59, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Natural Farming → Natural farming – Capitalization not necessary, as per Forest gardening developed by Robert Hart. Nirvana2013 (talk) 10:54, 19 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Support. Not a proper noun. --DAJF (talk) 14:34, 20 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Further consider and review, please (support, qualified by more considerations): 自然農法 – the Japanese page, already interwiki–linked to this article. Straight forwardly translate that Japanese page—that's one proposal of many proposals, far better than the current condition. Consider and review, please, the various Japanese authors covered together there under that article. So far it all derives from Japanese authors' writings, until "Natural/ Nature farming" writers from elsewhere are included in this article or in a split up range of articles, say for one example Coleby, Pat "Natural Farming", Australia, and many more of her books, and so many different authors with titles of Natural farming from all over earth.


 * This subject of discussion is all old ground for me—i've considered it all, rigorously, for a long time. One more proposal of many proposals to consider:


 * Split, and disambiguation, based on clear unambiguous titles' meanings; clearly defined in their leads and in the subsequent disambiguation; not split on reified, hyped, pretend brand names, pretend proper nouns, superficially different titles, different in fact by only two letters, having virtually no title meaning difference and better or worse translations, both, of the one Japanese 4 character word 自然農法—done by a seeming books (brand) salesman—evidently in hindsight it was some COI goin' on. I was extensively, gratuitously personally attacked herein by them—was obviously their agenda edits—for standing up for logic! for clear thinking! —including for standing for these comparatively more clear, less unclear, two proposals above and for many more proposals. Enough! Old talk ground! No worries, by the way, about the inline interwiki links being removed—they where a didactic device to try opening the eyes of those past bad editors.--macropneuma 06:36, 21 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Support. Not a proper noun, should not be capitalised. Jenks24 (talk) 02:48, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Natural farming or Natural Farming?
I suppose a category for Natural Farming could be a sub-page of another category but the small number of articles is not a limitation to inclusion. It is all to do with being specific and accurate.

I am unsure from the discussion that the two individuals had any awareness of Natural Farming as being something specific to Fukuoka rather than considering it just as an adjectival phrase. There is nothing in that discussion, or this one, to suggest that they did.

There are a number of quotes where Natural Farming is capitalised, although I accept that it is not universal written that way. It just seems to be the only convenient way in which to separate a general or confusing adjectival phrase; natural farming (no farming is "natural"), from a specific method; Natural Farming. A point underline by an alternative system Nature Farming, e.g..

I understand the Wikipedia generally only capitalises the first word of a title but I think this is a different case here as per "Manual of Style/Trademarks".

Did you considered it from a Fukuoka point of view. Thanks.--Iyo-farm (talk) 13:47, 23 July 2012 (UTC)


 * But is this farming method trademarked? Otherwise it should follow WP:MOSCAPS and articles like forest gardening. As for the Category:Natural farming, feel free to create if you feel it necessary. Nirvana2013 (talk) 15:37, 23 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Legally speaking, a trade or service mark does not need to be registered in order to be a trademark, if that is what you are asking. Wide and common unchallenged use suffices to establish rights for the owner or originator. There are also other kinds of rights or licenses, such as those that bind the Wikipedia. I am sure Fukuoka never desired this method to be trademarked.


 * But, as mentioned elsewhere, I think what we have here is something different. It is more of an editorial decision based on convention. I am also pretty sure the originators did not sit down and with to conceive of a corporately trademarked product for their method. I presume they just the term as a descriptor and that common use has just turned it into a proper noun.


 * The same too is apparent for Forest Gardening. The first reference I pull up (Forest Gardening: Cultivating an Edible Landscape) using the capitalised form. Skimming the internet shows both are used. I didn't know anything about Forest Gardening but it seems like less of a "method" than Fukuoka's or, especially, Okada's work and more of a descriptor.


 * I am just conscious that on the Wikipedia there are individuals who, for whatever reason, enjoy minor maintenance work and apply their attention over topic areas where they have no knowledge and appreciation of the subtleties and I am not convinced in these cases that they were considered.


 * As the titles are confusingly simple, I think the reader would be better served if they were capitalised as proper nouns for the specific definitions they now carry.


 * One can farm "naturally", whatever that might mean to you, but not be following Natural Farming. --Iyo-farm (talk) 01:29, 25 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Forest gardening (at least in temperate regions) is a specific seven-layer method developed by Robert Hart during the 1960s. The reference you pulled up is the title of Hart's book, hence it is capitalized. Another example of a specific agricultural method is forest farming pioneered by Toyohiko Kagawa during the 1930s.


 * I am glad to hear that Fukuoka was not interested in trademarking his farming method (in my opinion the more people who can freely use/teach these sustainable methods the better). Just as a side note, for one individual's attempt to copyright his farming method (i.e. permaculture to Permaculture) see Permaculture. Nirvana2013 (talk) 06:57, 25 July 2012 (UTC)


 * No, Forest Farming is used in a capitalised form inside the book, and elsewhere. Yes, there are other non-exclusive approaches to marking an idea.


 * By my logic, "forest farming" would be any farming which took place in a forest and "Forest Farming" would be this special 7 stage approach. Unless one capitalises, how can one tell the difference?


 * I can see both side of the argument for trademarking. On one hand, the originator might want to protect the purity of the idea so it is not mis-sold and misrepresented to others. See the current shenanigans over what is "organic" in the USA, as corporate interest start to prevail, and in Japan we suffered terrible damage to the popular LOHAS movement (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) when one of the big corporations waded in to trademark all uses of it in order to sell magazine and festivals (it set the movement back many, many years as early adopters were frightened off by their lawyers. And they did not even originate the term. Why ... the market became worth billions). On the other, if it is about total control and making money, it will kill the idea off from being widely picked up ... open source is the way to go. Yes, adulteration is a problem ... and which grassroots innovator has the resources to play the corporate, trademark anything internationally and then defend it?


 * Perhaps a stronger argument could be put forward for Kyusei Nature Farming as it has become more established, formalised and widely used. The truth is, although Fukuoka was an inspiring guru-like teacher, his influence has been very small. It'd still tend towards considering the terms proper nouns though and am not sure those for lowering considered all this. You probably know Bill Mollison was inspired by/supported Fukuoka and met with him too? --Iyo-farm (talk) 20:25, 25 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I jumped from forest gardening to forest farming there unintentionally ... I confused the two similar generic terms. --Iyo-farm (talk) 10:11, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Self-sufficient seed production
See Plant_propagation An important issue in any organic farming, natural farming and biodynamic farming is that one can produce one's own seed (hence many take care to choose crop cultivars that produce very fertile seeds -heirloom crops, ...-). However, using crops that do not produce viable seeds (and so can only be propagated vegetatively) seems to be more ecologic in some ways, as it prevents the accidental propogation (by birds, ...) of these non-native crops into the surrounding environment.

Perhaps useful to mention in article KVDP (talk) 14:39, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Merger proposal

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a Merge Proposal and Redirect – Move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the target talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request for the Proposal to Merge Nature Farming into natural farming was: Not Done ~by Consensus.

Propose: Merge Nature Farming into natural farming per 自然農法 (Google English translation) plus add relevant information from Japanese Wikipedia article. Nirvana2013 (talk) 11:39, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Support. The former is a stub, anyway. Lfstevens (talk) 15:54, 30 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Strong Oppose - We have two significantly different farming approaches here; one popularised by Masanobu Fukuoka and one popularised by Mokichi Okada. They have different histories, contexts and have developed in significantly different manners, e.g. in Okada's case through organized religion and, latterly, incorporating "effective microorganism" technology (EM) . Organisation promoting Okada's work and related academia have standardised the use of "Nature farming" as the translation of "shizen nōhō" whereas in Fukuoka it has been translated and is generally referred to as "natural farming".


 * The Japanese Wikipedia is not a good example to use as the related articles are less well develop and on the English language Wikipedia we use English language references. The topic you link to is rather vague using the term natural farming in a generic sense. I see no advantage for the English language Wikipedia to be moved in that direction. What is needed is for the Okada and Kyusei Nature Farming (Teruo Higa) articles to be developed more. --Iyo-farm (talk) 16:11, 30 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Strong Oppose - What a stupid idea. Cardabelle (talk) 21:12, 9 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Oppose: Merging would stifle the development of one of the two topics, most likely the story of Okada's system, which is not as visible in the West.


 * A merge would seem to imply one or more of the following faulty premises:


 * That 300-400 words would exhaust the historical narrative of at least one of these systems.
 * That one of these definitions of shizen nōhō is redundant.
 * That there is a broader, general theory of shizen nōhō that acknowledges, but supersedes, both of these systems, yet its praxis is (for some reason) solely relevant in a Japanese context.
 * That these approaches are mostly the same, but that one of them never caught on, or had some abortive flaw.


 * A survey article about eco-agriculture in Japan would be useful and interesting, but it should supplement, not subsume, these articles. A survey article solely about pure eco-agricultural theory would not be limited by the rubric of shizen nōhō. Ringbang (talk) 17:16, 30 July 2012 (UTC)


 * It's been nearly three months. Time to remove the merge hatnote? Ringbang (talk) 06:38, 25 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I have added a request to WP:PM. Nirvana2013 (talk) 09:14, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Oppose The former article is a stub but is an entirely different system, and for that reason I don't think it should be merged with this article, despite their similarities. Nature farming just needs to be developed further. Karmos (talk) 06:07, 11 December 2012 (UTC)


 * By the way to the vote. This is no criticism, just a note of experience. By the way, Google translator is seriously crap for English to Japanese or Japanese to English; –very different cultural philosophies, particles, sentence and verb structures, and idioms; not amenable to statistical machine translation (–comparing of parallel texts) which Google uses. For English to Japanese or Japanese to English translation it’s imperative that the translator understands the meanings of both language’s words; not possible for a machine. Try back translating, there you’ll see many crap translation examples (–reverse the translation from the result). ——--macropneuma 04:41, 10 January 2013 (UTC) ——--macropneuma 07:01, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

''The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 12:49, 15 January 2013 (UTC) '' A copy of this template can be found here

About terracing
Hi there, Maybe this quote isn't exactly true: "For example, Sepp Holzer, an Austrian permaculture farmer, advocates the creation of terraces on slopes to control soil erosion. Fukuoka avoided the creation of terraces in his farm, even though terraces were common in China and Japan in his time. Instead, he prevented soil erosion by simply growing trees and shrubs on slopes."

I think it is the other way around. Although Sepp Holzer advocates teracing, all he does is to build level roads between slopes. Fukuoka on the other hand does write that it is 'a good idea to dig the soil from behind the trees and form terraces, once established' (natural way of farming), he even emphasizes that it matters whether terraces are exactly level, or almost level. (He was a scientist after all)

Jurgen, Netherlands — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.145.221.213 (talk) 09:55, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

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"Other forms of natural farming"
I wonder how the development of the "Other forms of natural farming" came about?

I thought this article was about Masanobu Fukuoka's natural farming, not some kind of general use of the term (ultimately no farming is "natural"). I changed it from "variants" which, obviously, they were not.

Should not actually be deleted or reduced down to see alsos. --92.8.220.60 (talk) 18:11, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Control testing?
I hate to have to be the elephant in the room, but as good as what everything this guy touches is in terms of principles and ideals,.. -WHEN, nature can,.. -WHEN,.. the soil can,.. -WHEN,.. there's sufficient shade,.. whatever,..

... have his methods stood up to control testing, in the exact opposite,.. harsh, arid, difficult conditions, rather than quite absurdly, rich volcanic Japanese soils?

I've no doubt he was not naive to think that everyone has such soils, but in terms of universality?

i.e. AFTER seeing more of the world first-hand, did his practices change, or did he suggest modifications, or perhaps sub-sets of choices of methods, for especially difficult conditions, etc?

OR,

did he just sit there pretending as though they were universal?

it would be a fair criticism, if he did, he's far from the first to want for no-one to have to use artificial means.

So, i'm suggesting 2 new sections ; 1 Criticisms, including the above if that's the case,

&

2 A historical shift, or suggested focus, as his response to criticism?..

... if that was his response to the need - it probably wouldn't convince everyone, but it should be in the page, if he tried addressing the shhortfalls with something like that. Or whatever else his suggestions might've been -  so say, if he suggested MINIMAL fertilisation, or MINIMAL aquaengineering,.. i don't know,.. whatever. 120.21.218.12 (talk) 20:01, 6 June 2023 (UTC)